If you work with a lot of SharePoint documents, you can probably appreciate the appeal of syncing your SharePoint library content to your computer. Doing so brings the following benefits:

24/7 access to your documents. Read and edit while you’re offline. Everything syncs with SharePoint whenever you go back online.

Browser-free interaction with your documents. Opening your documents in a Web browser is fine, but working directly in your file system is usually more convenient.

To sync a library: Go to the library > click Sync > click Sync Now in the OneDrive for Business wizard.

Keep in mind the following restrictions and limitations related to syncing SharePoint libraries.

How many items can I sync?

You can sync up to 20,000 items in your OneDrive for Business library, including folders and files.

You can sync up to 5,000 items in other SharePoint libraries, including folders and files. These are the libraries you find in various SharePoint sites, such as team sites and community sites.

What’s the size limit for downloading files?

In any SharePoint library, you can download files of up to 2 GB.

What’s the character limit for files and folders?

These limits apply to files and folders that you add to a synced library folder for uploading to SharePoint. In normal practice, you’re unlikely to hit these limits. But I’ll mention them here, just in case:

File names can have up to 128 characters

Folder names can have up to 256 characters

Folder name/file name combinations can have up to 260 characters

If you have a file, folder, or combination that exceeds the limit, the item will remain in the synced library folder, and an error icon will appear on the item to tell you that there’s a sync problem.

Invalid characters

If a file or folder you’re trying to upload to OneDrive for Business contains any of the characters listed below, rename the file or folder to remove these characters. The list of invalid characters is different on Office 365 and SharePoint 2013.

In SharePoint 2013: \ /:* ? " < > | # { } % ~ &

In Office 365: " # % * : < > ? / \ |

Invalid file types

You cannot upload OneNote files, or files with a *.tmp or *.ds_store extension. Additionally, you cannot upload desktop.ini, thumbs.db, or ehthumbs.db.

Additionally, you cannot upload types of files that are blocked on the SharePoint site. If your organization is running SharePoint Server, the list of blocked files may vary depending on what your administrator sets up. If your organization is running SharePoint Online, the default list of blocked files is fixed and can't be changed. To see a list of the default blocked files, see Types of files that cannot be added to a list or library.